Blogos

#PeoplesVote

It’s hard to explain to European friends the how and why of division cleaving asunder convention. Sober reflection our parent of parliaments traditionally promotes appears to have evaporated in the heat of wild anxiety. (Julian of Norwich was quoted on the radio earlier: she who tends to be wheeled out, alas, when hopelessness hoves over the horizon.)

This evening’s Parliamentary vote on the Government’s EU Withdrawal Bill, designed to protect the Irish border, has the potential to explode the Referendum’s result.

Who knew the bloated tedium that would result from David Cameron’s attempt to make his mark? Who appreciated the fickleness of an ill-informed electorate? The vacuity of detail in the run-up to that June 2016 decision now appears so frantically obvious it’s hard to grasp how we didn’t ask more pertinent questions.

Tiens: hindsight, huh?

Setting aside the partisan nature of war, it would be interesting to listen to those who experienced the Blitz comment on the politics [poliblitz seems more accurate] of these self-immolating days. Would they see beyond the rats-in-a-sack spectacle or sit in expectation of the monumental fall-out?

This tragic figure from Dr Who: an exemplar of the aphorism I don’t know whether to laugh or cry.

Twenty sixth October 2018. It’s the last summer-timed Friday of the United (sic) Kingdom’s place in the European project.

The manner of our departure isn’t helping: absence by a thousand cuts. We are living through history: and we shall be judged harshly for the transformation from nobly profiled figurehead to featureless irrelevance.

Rather than carp, how can we help? Concentrate on flourishing the country which appears in the grip of a lack of good manners.

Sound … irrelevant? Well, the better one behaves, the stronger one grows. Mebbie this is just the moment to add to campaigns of strengthening our behaviour with courtesy, kindness and consideration?

The deepening of humanity in each of us is a powerful weapon in the arsenal of life by virtue of the virtues it develops. If you want to be Great, be kind. If it wants to be Great Britain once more, it has to be kind to itself.

Granted, an empathic stretch of the imagination will be needed to grasp just how crucial a role temperate rationalism will play in long-term success. Yet if we are inert in commitment to flourish these isles, forget Britain after the Romans’ departure. It’ll be as though we’re erased from the future.

Cassandra O’Brien Δ.17 is an identification tag. A tag removes the humanity from the … object. What remains after removing humanity from humanity? Prisoners. Evolving prisons to focus on education may assist restoring self esteem. Moral decay is preceeded by emotional decay. We can, at least, prevent that.